Of the 500 big companies in the well-known Standard & Poor’s stock index, 115 paid a total corporate tax rate — both federal and otherwise — of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of company reports done for The New York Times by Capital IQ, a research firm. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate less than 10 percent. – David Leonhardt, New York Times, February 1, 2011.

Cain's second 9 is a 9% rate for corporate taxes, except that it's not really a corporate tax but a business-transaction tax. Still, the basic idea has value. The U.S. today has the second highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. And yet, of the 500 big companies in the Standard & Poor's stock index, 115 paid a total corporate tax rate--both federal and otherwise--of less than 20% over the past five years. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate of less than 10%. – Fareed Zakaria, “Complexity Equals Corruption," October 31, 2011 Time.

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I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted
in the Capri case in N.D. Ill. An article that I wrote on DNA profiling was cited by the Colorado Supreme Court (Shreck case) and a Florida appellate court (Brim case). I was interviewed by NHK-TV about the Jan-Hendrik Schon affair. I am developing ipABC, an entity that combines rigorous IP analytics with study of business models, to optimize utilization of intellectual property. I can be reached at C8AsF5 at yahoo.com.